mods history
mods history
Category:
Life (or, to use its full name,
Modernism or sometimes
Modism) was a lifestyle based around
fashion and
music that developed in
London,
England in the late
1950s and reached its peak in the early to mid
1960s. People who followed this lifestyle were known as Mods, and were mainly to be found in Southern
England.
Mods were obsessed with clothes and music, including Black American
R&B and
Soul, Jamaican
Ska, and
Bluebeat and a select few British groups such as the
Small Faces,
the Kinks,
The Spencer Davis Group and
The Who.
Mods would gather at all-night clubs to show off their clothes and dance. They would typically choose
scooters as their mode of transportation, either the
Lambretta or the
Vespa. These were sometimes adorned with many lights and mirrors and were intended to gain attention.
Mods are sometimes seen as an outgrowth of the
Teddy Boy movement, and the most obvious similarity might be their love of suits. However, their emphasis was more on England than the Teddy Boys, and perhaps this is part of the reason why they did not appear on a big scale in other parts of the world.
An alternative youth movement known as '
Rockers' often clashed with the Mods, leading to street battles between the two factions in seaside resorts such as
Brighton and
Margate. These events led to much anguished discussion about 'modern youth' in Britain during the early 1960s. The conflicts inspired
Anthony Burgess's novel
A Clockwork Orange in which the anti-hero is arguably a futuristic Mod. The film
Quadrophenia (
1979), based on the
album of the same name by
The Who (
1973), also celebrated the movement.
Partly because of the success of this film, the mod movement enjoyed a revival during the late
1970s. Many of these later mods were fans of bands such as
The Jam,
The Merton Parkas,
Secret Affair, and
The Lambrettas, and
Two Tone groups such as
The Specials,
The Beat,
The Selecter, and
Madness.
The logo of the mod movement was a stylized
target. A prime example of this is the logo of British fashion designer
Ben Sherman, whose clothes were and continue to be associated with the Mod movement.
The band
The Jam were highly influenced musically and stylistically by mod culture as are more recent musicians
Ocean Colour Scene who often collaborate with
Paul Weller, and
The Ordinary Boys. Mod Culture also still runs strong in the german Electronic scene: keyboard wizard
Erobique and electronic singer/songwriter
lotte ohm. are very obviously mods, as is
Frank Popp.
Mods made up (and continue to make up) a large proportion of the
Northern soul movement, a subculture based on obscure american soul records from the 60's and 70's.
"Mod is clean living under difficult circumstances" -
Peter Meaden
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